CHAPTER IX 



MIND AS AN ORGAN OF WHOLES 



Summary. — Mind is, after the atom and the cell, the third 

 great fundamental structure of Holism. It is not itself a real 

 whole, but a holistic structure, a holistic organ, especially of 

 Personality which is a real whole. 



Psychology treats mind in man and the higher animals as a 

 factor or phenomenon by itself, and analyses it into various modes 

 of activity, such as consciousness, attention, conception, feeling, 

 emotion and will. In this work Mind is viewed from a different 

 angle; it is a form of Holism and it is studied as a holistic struc- 

 ture, with a definite relation to other earlier holistic structures. 

 It has, therefore, a much wider setting and performs more funda- 

 mental functions in the order of the universe than appears from 

 Psychology. 



Mind springs from two roots. In the first place, it is a con- 

 tinuation, on a much higher plane, of the system of organic regu- 

 lation and co-ordination which characterises Holism in organisms. 



Mind is thus the direct descendant of organic regulation and 

 carries forward the same task. This is the universalising side of 

 Mind, and appears in the conceptual-rational or reasoning activity, 

 which co-ordinates and regulates all experience. Its physical basis 

 is the brain and neural system, which is the central system of 

 regulation and co-ordination in the body. It is thus the crowning 

 phase of the regulative, co-ordinative process of Holism. 



In the second place. Mind is a development of an "individual" 

 aspect of Holism which already plays a subordinate part in or- 

 ganisms. In man it pushes to the front as conscious individuality 

 or the Self of the Personality, and becomes as conspicuous a 

 feature of developed Holism as regulative co-ordination, if not 

 more so. This intense element of individuality is the principal 

 novelty in the development of Mind, the real revolutionary de- 

 parture from the prior system of regulative routine, and in Per- 

 sonality it culminates in a new order of wholes for the universe. 

 Mind in its individual aspect is thus the chief means whereby 

 organic Holism has developed into human Personality. 



Mind is in some respects as old as life, but life outran it in the 

 race of Evolution. Besides, Mind needed life as a nurse, and its 

 full development has therefore had to wait for that of life. The 



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